by Brokeback Watchtower 22 Replies latest watchtower bible
But lets say for hypothetical reasons that Paul is real and these are his word's He is suffering from megalomania and demonizes anyone who he feels is a threat to his imagined superiority due to receiving messages/visions from the collective unconscious which have inflated his ego.
Often when that happens a person goes off and become a teacher of the way and make no further progress in the natural individuation process pity look all the suffering and worry it brought upon him.
Brokeback WT - "Was the Apostle Paul out of his mind? Or just an eccentric megalomaniac?"
The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Skeptic Sam - "I don't think 'Paul' ever existed but was a litery creation of a second century church leader named Marcion."
There's another school of thought that suggests "Paul" was actually a covert Roman agent whose assignment was influencing the new upstart "Jesus Movement" to make it more acceptable to the Roman Empire.
Your post struck a nerve with me, not you yourself but a husband and wife team I debated about seven years ago who made some very bold assertions about Simon Magus while they simultaneously attacked Jesus Christ and the entire Gang as a historical figures, they made no sense. You might have read their book or fictional work, the title was "Simon Magus the real Messiah",, HTBWC, it was not you that made my blood boil, the British couple did that years ago speaking to a captive audience on a radio show. When I called them to ask how they can deny Flavious Josephus words about Jesus and accept his reports about Simon-the-Magician from Samaria, the couple squirmed not realizing I was way ahead of them. I wrote my first blog on Simon Magus back in the 1990s making up short fictional stories about him and his followers after his failed attempt to buy the powers of Peter.
I deleted by Blog I wrote because the consensus started to teach Josephus was a fraud too and being young I felt I was not competent enough to defend his existence, I was only 26 years of age. They convinced me that Flavious was a propaganda artist created by the Christians or Romans, so why bother learning if everything is tainted. That killed the desire to learn as much about the mythics until someone explained "everything is in doubt if you allow it, fight them by asking them to prove their version of history Have you read any of Carrier's and author of Jesusneverexisted.com"? Don't you find it dishonest using how authors use history they deemed "unreliable" and "distorted" to draw conclusions on? The British Couple were great at dodging legit questions while they called St. Paul and Peter "frauds", if their claims that "Simon Magus was the Messiah", how could they claim both Peter and Paul never existed? The Gnostic writings are strange, catching things they wrote and applying rituals the Apostles spoke of to back up claims does not work.'
Mystics asset Paul writings about the "Lord's Evening Meal" was actually speaking about the practice done by followers of Mithra, very little is known about Mitra's followers of Mysticism extrapolate volumes of material, how? The drinking of blood figuratively speaking was taken from ritualistic Mithra's followers of taking a young bull in a cave and cutting it's throat so they could drink the bull's blood while warm, putting cup or vase large enough to share it's blood and power. Still since we don't know anything for sure, how do they make these claims if they deny all First to Fourth Century history as corrupted? '
Skeptics have been trying to destroy Josephus's works since he probably wrote them in the 2nd century, do you see how hard it is to take the scholars or writers works seriously while they deny or doubt we can know anything during that time period because there are no originals or autographs in tact?
Meglomaniac Definition
The dangers of becoming inflated when receiving vision from the collective unconscious and this is what I think happened to the apostle Paul.
http://chinesebuddhiststudies.org/previous_issues/chbj2108-New_Hopkins_CHBJ_V21.pdf
......It will be remembered that in the analysis of the personal unconscious the first things to be added to consciousness are the personal contents and I suggested that these contents which have been repressed, but are capable of becoming conscious, should be called the personal unconscious. I also showed that to annex the deeper layers of the unconscious, which I have called the collective unconscious, produces an extension of the personality leading to the state of inflation. (Jung 1953, 7:2433 )......
Such misapplication of yoga leads to positive and negative inflation and all their attendant ills of which Jung speaks repeatedly and eloquently throughout his works. For instance: In projection, he vacillates between an extravagant and pathological deification of the doctor, and a contempt bristling with hatred. In introjection, he gets involved in a ridiculous self-deification, or else a moral self-laceration. The mistake he makes in both cases comes from attributing to a person the contents of the collective 4 lha’i nga rgyal. Jung’s Warnings Against Inflation • 163 unconscious. In this way he makes himself or his partner either god or devil. Here we see the characteristic effect of the archetype: it seizes hold of the psyche with a kind of primeval force and compels it to transgress the bounds of humanity. It causes exaggeration, a puffed-up attitude (inflation), loss of free will, delusion, and enthusiasm in good and evil alike (Jung 1953, 7:110)....
Positive inflation of the religious sort can lead to assumptions of grandeur, viewing oneself as having the universal panacea: The second possible mode of reaction is identification with the collective psyche. This would be equivalent to acceptance of the inflation, but now exalted into a system. In other words, one would be the fortunate possessor of the great truth that was only waiting to be discovered, of the eschatological knowledge that means the healing of the nations. This attitude does not necessarily signify megalomania in direct form, but megalomania in the milder and more familiar form it takes in the reformer, the prophet, and the martyr. (Jung 1953, 7:260) Just as the prophet convinced that he/she has the final truth is inflated through identification with the forces of deep contents, so is the humble disciple, affecting the posture of only following the master’s dictums: But besides the possibility of becoming a prophet, there is another alluring joy, subtler and apparently more legitimate: the joy of becoming a prophet’s disciple.… The disciple is unworthy; modestly he sits at the Master’s feet and guards against having ideas of his own. Mental laziness becomes a virtue; one can at least bask in the sun of a semidivine being.…Naturally the disciples always stick together, not out of love, but for the very understandable purpose of effortlessly confirming their own convictions by engendering an air of collective agreement.…[J]ust as the prophet is a primordial image from the collective psyche, so also is the disciple of the prophet. (Jung 1953, 7:263-265) In both cases inflation is brought about by the collective unconscious, and the independence of the individuality suffers injury. In a similar vein: These few examples may suffice to show what kind of spirit animated these movements. They were made up of people who identified themselves (or were identified) with God, who deemed themselves supermen, had a critical approach to the gospels, followed the promptings of the inner man, and understood the kingdom of heaven to be within. In a sense, therefore, they were modern in their outlook, but they had a religious inflation instead of the rationalistic and political psychosis that is the affliction of our day. (Jung 1969, 9:140).....Correspondingly, inflation is of two varieties, negative and positive, the former being when the ego is subsumed in the collective unconscious and latter when the ego takes too much to itself. Jung says: With the integration of projections—which the merely natural man in his unbounded naïveté can never recognize as such—the personality becomes so vastly enlarged that the normal ego-personality is almost extinguished. In other words, if the individual identifies himself with the contents awaiting integration, a positive or negative inflation results. Positive inflation comes very near to a more or less conscious megalomania; negative inflation is felt as an annihilation of the ego. (Jung 1966, 16:472)
It's sad to see people on this website doubt the existence of Paul, something which even the most skeptical scholars and historians on earth do not do.
What makes you a better historian than they are?
Why should I trust your judgment over that of professional historians and scholars?
Does this sound like a madman?
"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor freeman, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one" (Galatians 3:28)
"Do not owe anything to anyone except to love one another; for whoever loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law. For the law code... is summed up in this saying: “You must love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does not work evil to one’s neighbor; therefore, love is the law’s fulfillment." (Romans 13:8-10)
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but do not have love, I have become a clanging gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and understand all the sacred secrets and all knowledge, and if I have all the faith so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my belongings to feed others, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I do not benefit at all." (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)
FusionTheism - "It's sad to see people on this website doubt the existence of Paul..."
Yeah, I'm all broken up about it.
FusionTheism - "...something which even the most skeptical scholars and historians on earth do not do."
Actually, some here doubt the existence of Paul is because of the skepticism of scholars and historians.
FT it's great we can have discussions with Broke-back because he is actually asking questions and providing his input instead of insulting us. I like him, I like you and I like the poster who brought in different ideas about "Paul never existing" so we can learn more and have fun topic discussions without the hate! Thank's for the link Brokeback, working on it now. .Broke-back, how do you think the Jews made it to China by the time Marco Polo traveled there, was it due to the Khans and their tolerance and bringing order to that region why?
If you have not had the time to read John Marcos Allegro's works on the Essene Culture I recommend checking his ideas out because something made him change his entire view of Christianity chasing a story about a community in Quram all kicking back, a vegetarian culture where both sexes were considered equal. New myth writers claim St. Paul killed all of the Essenes or at least those who would not follow him. Paul changed them to "meat eaters", "downgraded the roles of females as inferior(Don't see that in Paul's writings, he was emphatic on taking care of the poor and needy widows, attacking men who left women abandoned as "worse than a dog!". Why was Paul's message met by the females with eagerness, he had something about him that made the marginalized feel good and have hope, something the Religious kept hidden from all non-elect Jews.
